Site assignment for relations and joint operations in the distributed transaction processing environment

An integrated strategy for choosing the sites where relations are to be stored while simultaneously determining where joint operations are to take place is considered. Based on the transaction characteristic and arrival frequency to each site, a methodology to formulate the strategy is developed to assign relations to systems and determine joint sites so as to minimize the amount of intersystem communication while simultaneously balancing resource utilization among systems. The methodology first decomposes queries into relation steps and then makes site assignments based on linear integer-programming techniques.<<ETX>>